I’ve been talking about a lot of different reasons you might raise your prices, but I’d like to go over the most obvious – when you’ve gotten to a point where you’re creating as much as you can create (and still have time to answer customer emails, package up the art and ship it out, and deal with the other logistics of running a business) and you’re selling regularly and you’re selling most of the work you produce, then you’ve hit an income ceiling. You can’t make more money if you’re selling all the pieces you can possibly sell. So the only choice if you’d like to make more money is to raise your prices.

Now I know you’re probably here reading this blog because you aren’t selling all the pieces you can possibly sell. You’d like to sell much more regularly, right?

But I still want you to be able to envision all the reasons you might increase the prices for your art, even if now isn’t the time to do it. Go back and read the two previous posts (1 and 2) so you can understand other reasons why it still might be time to raise your prices.

And think about what you’ve heard of supply and demand. How many pieces you can possibly make is your max supply. If demand (how many sales you make) meets supply, that’s the most money you can possibly make.

Unless you raise your prices. Raising your prices increases your income from those pieces, but it can also sometimes mess with demand. I’ve seen it go both ways, depending on the type of customers involved. I’ve seen artists raise their prices and suddenly sell a lot more (probably because of last week’s post topic). And I’ve seen artists raise their prices and see a small decrease in sales. But typically the decrease in demand isn’t enough to be making less than you were with the cheaper prices. If the it falls that low, then you would want to lower your prices again.

Let me give you number examples. Say Linda was selling her paintings at $500 each and typically selling all 5 of the paintings she could create in a month. So her maximum income was $2500. When she increased to $750 each, it turned her max income to $3750, but she was only selling 4 of the 5 paintings she could create in a month. So she was still making $3000 ($500 more than she was at her old prices). Demand went down a bit, but she still increased her maximum income.

And not all artists have a decrease in demand like my mythical Linda. If she didn’t have a decrease in demand, she’d be making that full $3750 every month!

So keep a watch out for this. As you start to sell more, pay attention to how much you’re really able to make and still have time to run the rest of the business (and time for your personal life! don’t let business suck you in too far!). Then see how you can play with your pricing to account for your limited ability to produce art.

The last reason you might decide to raise your prices is that you also want to keep up with the general inflation of the market.

Year after year, prices go up in all industries just a teensy bit. Your eggs this year probably cost a couple cents more than they did last year. Not noticeably, but just enough to keep up with the economy. I could go into economics here, but it’s not my strong suit and I’d probably bore you anyway. If you’re curious, Google “inflation” and read about how it works.

You aren’t required to raise your prices, but a lot of artists will increase their numbers just a few dollars each year. It’s an acceptable practice and can help you slowly raise your prices little by little instead of overnight.

If you do choose to raise overnight, I highly suggest you “launch” your new prices by telling your following that the prices will be increasing several weeks leading up to the date they actually do. If you remind them a few times, you’ll usually see a few more sales come up before they would have to pay more for the pieces.

If you’re looking for more help with setting prices for your art, not only am I giving an online lecture next week about pricing art effectively but I’m also answering questions about pricing your art specifically. If you sign up for the webinar, you can even submit a picture of your art ahead of time with your questions and I’ll be sure to answer them during the lecture. There will even be a recording so that you can watch the lecture even if you can’t make it live. You can sign up over here.

Everyone has their own experience with money. Some grew up with lots of monetary wealth, and some with hardly any. I’ve met people who were fine with money until they set off on their own as a young adult and money slapped them in the face.

A lot of you come to me with major money issues.

Healing those is the only way you’re ever going to begin bringing in money. There’s something about the way our world works that doesn’t allow you to break through to a new income level until you’ve settled some of the yucky mindsets you’ve got around money. There are tons of reasons you could be messed up with money – like acting based on scarcity or fear, or believing that you can only get money by working hard (the dirty, ugly kind of work), or thinking your skills aren’t worth much.

No matter what your blocks are, they are just that – blocks. And they are getting in the way.

If you want to make enough from your art that it’s a business, not a hobby, then you’ve got to get over these blocks. It all starts with one little step. If you commit to taking one step, you’ll be that much closer to the income you want from your art and that much further from all those money issues. Here are some examples of steps you can take. Pick one or make up your own. Commit to doing it by commenting below to let us know exactly what you’ll be doing.

Raise your price on one of your pieces to something that just barely makes you uncomfortable. Would you never charge $100 for the piece you’ve priced at $75? Try pricing it at $90 and see what happens. Sit with it for a while.

Raise the prices on all of your pieces by a couple dollars each.

Pay for something “unnecessary” like a really pretty material, a tool you’ve been coveting, or a course that could help you grow in your art or business knowledge.

Start selling prints if you’re a 2D artist. Your originals can be priced high and the prints much lower, allowing you to feel confident that you aren’t making your work unaffordable. If you work in 3D, you can also scale your work by using less-intricate designs or less-expensive materials to make similar work. This makes your products affordable to people at multiple socioeconomic levels.

Last week I talked about why you shouldn’t rely on a formula to price your art. If you missed the post, you can catch up here: Pricing for Artists Part 1.

But you can’t take math out of the equation completely. You’re running a business and the fact is that you have to make money. (Side note – if that doesn’t matter to you, then stop reading my blog! Just enjoy the process of creating and stop worrying about running a business. What you’re doing is a hobby. And that’s okay. It doesn’t always have to be a business. Make it what *you* want it to be.)

So here’s the nitty gritty. I’m going to teach you my favorite strategy for pricing art of any type. Ready?

(I’ll note here that cost of overhead can be a little complicated. The easiest way to do it is to figure out how much you spend overall each month on energy, gas for your car, water if that’s part of your medium, and anything else like that. We’ll call that A. Then count the average number of products you make per month. We’ll call that B.Overhead = A/B
Yep, it’s that simple. Just have the same amount of overhead for each product and call it a day. The differences in time you spent on each product and all that will work themselves out later.)

Your Base Price is actually the lowest possible price for your product. It’s your break-even number. If you price any lower, you’re losing money. “But Laura, I don’t lose money by not adding in the hourly wage.” Ah, but you do. You are running a business (I say this a lot) and that means you get paid. Just as if you were an employee, you have to take a wage when you’re a solopreneur too.

So what do you do with the Base Price? Well, you sit with it. This is where things get a little touchy-feely. You need to get really quiet with yourself. Write down your Base Price on a piece of paper. Double it and then write that number down. We’ll call it Number2. Got it?

Think about your target market and Number 2. How does it feel? Do you feel like your stealing from them? Do you feel like you’re worth more?

Let that resonate for a while.

Then I want you to say the Base Price out loud (yep, to the empty room) and and move up in increments from there. For instance $50, then $60. Let each price give you a positive or negative feeling. Keep moving up until the “I’m worth more than that” feeling goes away and the prices feel positive. Then keep moving up until you hit a negative, “that’s unreasonable” price. You’ve gone too far. The last positive price is perfect so we’ll call it the Perfect Price.

I’ll also note here that this works really well in a group of peers (that means other business owners or artists, not your best friend or your mom). You say each number out loud to everyone and they affirm your positive or negative feelings on the price. It gets a little woo-woo, be forewarned. But if you’re not afraid of auras and collective energy, then it really helps you break through your own monetary issues, which are almost certainly messing with your ability to properly price your work.

This Perfect Price will both give you a profit and give you the confidence to tell people out loud how much it will cost to buy the piece. This Perfect Price will feel so warm and fuzzy that you’re no longer ashamed to tell people what your art costs. And this Perfect Price will allow you to find the unique customers that will fall in love with your work *and* pay for it instead of lowering your price to fit the wrong customer.

How do you currently price your work? What do you think of Resonate Pricing? How did you feel when you came up with your first Perfect Price? Let me know in the comments. Your thoughts might even get featured on a blog post or in the newsletter!

It’s especially difficult the more hours you spent on a piece. You get emotionally attached. You put your heart into it and now you’ve got to put a number… on your heart! So you decide to take your heart out of the equation and turn to math.

The temptation to devise formulas takes over and all of a sudden you’re stuck figuring out how much overhead you’ve got and what you should pay yourself per hour (or worse, not giving yourself a wage at all).

But hey! Wait a second!

This takes all the heart out of your pricing. And your customers will notice. It’s important to feel right about your prices more than just formulizing (like that word?) them. Formulaic pricing creates formulaic buying. You want your customers buying because they feel compelled and they love your products, not because they thought to themselves, “Well yes, that’s a reasonable price for this scarf and I haven’t seen others cheaper out there that are as well made. So I think I might purchase it. Let me add it to my cart and think about it for another few minutes.”

Instead, they should be saying to themselves, “Wow. Those colors are astounding! I have to have this scarf. It will pair so perfectly with that blue dress with the ruffles I can never pull off in the Fall.” And then you want them to start daydreaming about what will happen when they put on that outfit and your scarf pulls it all together… maybe their husband falls in love with them again when the marriage was waning, or they finally feel confident at work, or they pick their child up from school and don’t feel embarrassed to be wearing mom jeans.

And pricing is a stumbling block here. Underprice and your customer will never think the piece will make a big impact in their lives. Overprice and they’ll be too hesitant to pull the trigger.

A formula can’t find that middle ground. But your heart can.

Stay tuned. Here’s my favorite pricing method. It’s a combo of a few things you’ve probably heard before. And I think it strikes a great balance between math and woo-woo feelings.

This line has floated around the business blogs a lot over the past couple years. But I think it’s an imperative lesson to learn when you’re starting a business. (And yes, I mean selling your art is a business – but that’s for another post.) No one will think you’re the best if you have the cheapest prices.

It’s a psychological thing.
Imagine you’re looking to buy car insurance. You check several companies. So what if Jack Insurance charges (unrealistic numbers here) $25 a month, XYZ Local charges $36, and Jill AutoSure charges $43? You’re going to assume that Jack Insurance is the cheapoone that will screw you over in customer service and claims. You’re going to think that if something does go wrong, they’re going to fight you on it for every last penny. Then, depending on your position and needs, you’re probably going to pick between XYZ Local and Jill AutoSure. If you’ve got the money and/or put car insurance as a super top-priority thing, you’re going with Jill AutoSure.

Think about your business…. if you’re doing it right, you’re targeting customers who put your art as a super top-priority thing in their lives, aren’t you? See where I’m going? These people want to pay you for your art, but only if you remind them (subconsciously) of how amazing your art is by pricing it well. And well doesn’t mean cheap.

Let me translate this a little more. If I want a painting for my living room, I’m going to search a while before picking one. That’s an important decision for most people. If they’re going to put money into the art, they are going to make sure they love it. So they are definitely looking at more artists than just you. I am definitely looking at more artists than just you. And if Cindy Lou’s similar-sized and styled paintings are half the price, I am definitely assuming she’s not as good a painter as you are. And I’m expecting that buying from Cindy Lou means buying an inferior product. However, it Cindy Lou’s similar-sized and styled paintings are $10-20 less than yours, I’m probably going to think you and she are of equal talent. And then I’m going to want to spend less and buy from Cindy Lou.

So it’s a delicate balance. I’m not saying to be the most expensive in your market all the time. I’m saying don’t be the cheapest. It’s never good to be the cheapest. You will lose out on customers almost every time. And that’s why many of you have 3 sales in your Etsy shop. You could have 50 sales, but you’re charging $50 for an original 24″-square painting. And no one wants to buy “cheap” art.

Take it further? I’m sharing my favorite pricing resources in my Sunday newsletter this week. If you want help figuring out what is a good price for your art, sign up for my email list at the right and I’ll let you in on my tricks of the trade!